Everything Has it's Time

I have recently played a computer game from 1999. It is called Hype: the Time Quest.

Set in a medieval (and playmobil) world of knights, it revolves around a knight called Hype, who gets petrified and sent back in time two hundred years by an evil and powerful invader known initially as the Black Knight. In the past, the time of his king's great grandfather, he is unfrozen by an amateur sorcerer called Gogoud (he claims to be an apprentice, but he is the only sorcerer in existence at the time and so I would question 'of whom he is an apprentice?').

From there on the storyline follows Hype, who's sole ambition is to return to his own time via magical portals built on two sundials, becomes able to fling himself backwards and forwards through time as the beautifully written storyline dictates. It is a most cleverly written plot.

One of the things that is most striking is the passage of time. After each jump in time you move by 50 years. The only people you encounter in one age are the children (or indeed eye-twinkles) of the previous age and the adults (with a rare handful of heart-wrenching exceptions) do not survive. Ultimately it becomes quite saddening to see some of the more plot-central characters simply not being in the next age.

But it is a very good game.